Google Gives AdSense Publishers More Control

One of the biggest gripes I hear about AdSense is the minimal amount of control Publishers have over the ads that are shown.

Well, in case you haven’t heard, Google is about to roll out a new version of their Ad Review Center (ARC). Now you’ll have even more control over the ads that appear on your site.

If you’ve already enabled the ARC, then you can review and approve ads that appear on your pages today, but soon you’ll be able to do even more.

For example, instead of reviewing/blocking ads by group, you can review individual ads.

And for Placement-targeted ads (ads by advertisers who pay to place ads on your pages specifically), Google will show you the ads that will likely get the most number of impressions in advance. So you’ll know which ads your readers will see most.

Accessing The New Ad Review Center

If you’re already using the ARC, the new functionality may be available now or will be available soon.

If you haven’t used this feature yet, login to your AdSense account and click the Allow & Block tab. Now opt in to sign up.

You’ll have to wait a week or so before the ARC becomes available after opting in.

Warning: Don’t Minimize Your Earnings

Remember, there are two kinds of ads that appear on your site: Contextual and Placement.

Even though you will be able to, Google recommends not putting Placement-targeted ads on “review status” because they won’t be a part of the ad auction.

This could potentially lower your overall earnings because you’ll have fewer ads competing for real estate on your site.

The reason this is important is because one of the biggest keys to success with AdSense is attracting Placement-targeted advertisers. They outbid the Contextual advertisers because they want to advertise on your site specifically, thus earning you more per click.

I don’t have a very high click-thru rate with AdSense, but my sites attract a good amount of Placement advertisers and my Page RPM (revenue per page) for those ads is almost double the amount I’m earning for Contextual ads.

In English, that just means I am earning quite a bit per click for many of the ads I host, so it makes using AdSense very worthwhile and has even caused me to reconsider pricing for my 3rd party/private ads as of late.

Reminder: You can check how much you’re earning for Placement ads by viewing the Targeting Types report in the Performance Reports section.

Even though I actually use AdSense less (number of units overall) and my click-thru rates have decreased over the years (probably due to ad blindness), my Page RPM keeps increasing and continues to drive my earnings up.

So always make sure your custom channels are targeted and available to advertisers who may want to advertise on your site specifically.

Once you’re on this screen, click the name of the channel under the “Name” column and set the targeting to “yes” as indicated below.

Google wants to make sure your site is always available to Placement advertisers because that’s how you and Google will make the most money.

That is why they recommend that you not place these ads on “review status” when the new ARC rolls out. Of course, it’s up to you, though.

Say What???

In case I’ve confused the heck out of you with the amount of detail here, don’t worry. You don’t have to review the ads that appear on your site or even understand Placement-targeted advertising when this launches.

In fact, you don’t ever have to open the Ad Review Center if you don’t want to.

If you’re perfectly happy with how AdSense is running on your pages, then just sit back and let Google do the ad management as they have in the past.

Nevertheless, if you’re interested in having more control over the kinds of ads that show on your pages, the new Ad Review Center will be right up your alley.

And as far as Placement advertising goes, the take-home lesson is don’t “hold” those ads for review. Wait until they are live to review them so you don’t drive down the cost of your ad space in the auction.

Comments

My Google AdSense account approved but show “Your AdSense account is enabled only to show ads on YouTube. If you want to show ads on a different site, you’ll need to provide us with the URL of the site you want to monetize. You can do this via a one-time application form. Learn more.” Please solution my problem.

Google adsense has been the most earning source for almost 90% of blogs and websites. This is a big thing that they really care about their publisher even though they have millions of users around the world. I came to know about Ad Review Center (ARC)of google. Thanks for your great informative article.

One of the some very nice and informative posts. Quite an old adsense earner but never tried this. Just after this comment I am going to checkout this thing! Thanks Lisa for your nice writeup about it.

Yeah, I have never read anywhere Google mentioning this feature. I only sumbled upon it by accident. But the fact of the matter is that they say at Ad Planner that any changes will take effect in 48 hours, and sure enough; 48 hours later I actually started seeing ads relevant to my niche I have never seen before, and most of the irrelevant junk was gone! 🙄

Lisa, I ran into something I thought to ask you about as you are the Adsense expert. 😉

I was looking around the DoubleClick Ad Planner section of Google, and was surprized to see that my website is totally mis-categorized. (That’s with over 300 posts on the same topic! LOL!) No wonder I didn’t have any Placement Ads! There is no way advertisers in my niche could find me! Anyhow I was able to update the categories manually so that is all good now. I’m already seeing more relevant ads. I’m surprized nobody talks about the Ad Planner settings – at least I never heard of it before. 😕

It seems to be pretty important to make sure your website is under the right category – after all this is how advertisers will find you. Am I right?

Anyhow, my question is about another part of Ad Planner that I was not able to figure out. Ad Planner also shares your traffic info with advertisers; Unique Visitors and Pageviews per month. However they are only giving an estimate of your traffic, unless you share your Google Analytics data with Ad Planner. This is something you have to manually do, otherwise they only show estimates. 🙁

Since I found that my traffic data is way off (it supposed to be more than twice as much), and I know it is an important factor in attracting advertisers, I wanted to turn on the sharing feature. And this is where I ran into trouble. 😡

There the instruction is: “Visit the Edit Account and Data Sharing Settings page from within your account to opt in to sharing your data.” And here is the problem; I don’t find such an area anywhere! Not on my main Google Account, not under Google Analytics, and not under Google Webmaster Tools. What am I missing? 😳

If you have a minute would you shed some light on this? Your help is very much appreciated – as always. 🙂

These are great questions, Thita! To be honest, I haven’t visited the AP in a long time. The data was wrong (as you mentioned) so I just left it alone. Also, I find it very interesting that Google hardly ever encourages us to use that site — which I found kind of odd. I will have to re-visit this and will report back what I find. Heck, maybe this is a great idea for a future post! Thanks.

Hi Lisa, having this new version of Google it is more favorable for the site owners to have a control on which ads they want to maintain.
Thanks for the review. It a pleasure to know more about the other benefit given by Adsense.

Hi Lisa! Providing us this useful information is really a big help. I will definitely check this to enhance my knowledge about Adsence. Thanks for sharing this very informative post and keep up the good work!

hello lysa how are you? There I want to ask, for my comments have not been able to distinguish between comments and spam. What marks a spam comment? I was very upset and there are 210 spam I do not know where the spam and comments. please its support Lysa and readers willing to help. Thank you..
regards..

Thanks for the heads up Lisa. I always felt that if I had more control over the placement of the ads on my sites I would be able to make more money with Adsense. I have done some analysis in the past and I definitely felt that the target placement ads were more profitable for me so this is wonderful news for me.
thanks again.

I have recently started a web site, the info you offer on this website has helped me tremendously. Also it has excellent and very informative. After going through this great content i came to know lots of things which will help me to enrich my knowledge.

I took at look at the Ad Review Center, but I just keep it on “run ads automatically”. Just like Brad, I block a few categories (ones that haven’t generated any income, but have displayed ads), but other than that, I just keep everything as status quo.

I’m glad and I hope to finally be able to ban some of the misleading “iPad for $50” ads to auction sites. I’ve been trying to keep them out of my Adsense to avoid getting associated with these “not a cheat but darn close to it” lures, but each time I ban one advertiser, a similar one appears. Regardless of how much money these ads could make me, my name is everywhere on my site and I value my integrity and my visitors’ trust far more.

Lisa, thanks for these quality articles. You’re one of very few who are not trying to make us rich by selling us smoke and mirrors to sell others to sell others…

Lisa, here are just a few of my questions:
#1. Where do I choose between contextual and placement ads?
#2. How do I know which ads (contextual or placement) I’m turning the review option on for?
#3. In the Ad Review Center I see 3 different companies marked as “allowed”. However I have Auto approval turned on so should I see a lot more than that? Also I see completely different ads on my site then the ones on the approved list.

I’m just getting warmed up because I got more where those came from LOL!!

Hi Lisa
I was not aware of that. I have just submitted a request for the Ad review center. Looking forward to see what it can do. I have to agree with Ileane on this one. A video demo would be nice and I promise that I will help you promoted it for you on Social networks if you make one 😉

Yes!!! Google is FINALLY listening! I just checked out how this works and it is great! Finally there is a way to block those pesky rish-media ads where it was impossible to trace down the actual url.

One thing I don’t like is that you can’t tell how many ads are there in total. I kept hitting NEXT for like 15 minutes, going thru the ads, but I have no idea how much longer I would have to go to look at all of them.

However there is also a neat search feature on the left-hand side, so if you are looking to block a specific ad, this is a handy feature. Also you can filter ads by type (text, image, rich-media).

I’ve had Ad Review Center available on my account. Actually there is an option to run ads immediately without holding them for 24 hours so they can be reviewed.
I’d like to have more control over ads showing on my website, so I think this is a necessary feature for us.

Anne, if you want a new Adsense Account, have a relative signup for you. They will have to use their personal info. (address, phone, email, SS#, etc.) to get the account. This is what I did after being banned. Fortunately, Google doesn’t ban websites from Adsense. However, if there is something wrong with your site, they may ban you again. You may want to transfer your Blog to a personal WordPress account with a new domain name. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I don’t get banned again because Google is EVIL!

Hi Lisa, I hate to admit it but the only thing I’ve done so far is block ads from my affiliate networks. I know it’s sad I should do a better job of managing my AdSense account. But really Lisa we need better videos on this topic. I don’t think Google’s tutorials do a good enough job of showing how to work each of the modules for our best interest. (hint, hint)
🙂

This is very interesting. I’m going to have to sign up and check this out! Maybe, the new ads may be worth a shot to see if the CTR is higher! People are always hungry for fresh content and may be sick of old ads that rotate again and again. Thanks for sharing this new feature – didn’t even know it!

I took at look at the Ad Review Center, but I just keep it on “run ads automatically”. Just like Brad, I block a few categories (ones that haven’t generated any income, but have displayed ads), but other than that, I just keep everything as status quo.